Pioneering Diaspora

Trying it out

Everyone likes to be first. But in a social network, being first can be a bit lonely. Thus, finding and building a small community on Diaspora has been a bit of a challenge.

First off, you have to persuade people that they can actually try Diaspora today, which they can, very easily. They then need to try to find their friends too, and start talking.

In practice, the most active users are talking about the platform, and what they want it to do. There are people trying the new features too. This is all fine, as far as it goes.

The main lack, is groups. Tags work to help focus public discussions and find like-minded users, but private discussions centre around people currently. That’s not quite how it needs to be.

The Federated server model

I am not a security expert, but a federated model presents different risks to a closed network like Facebook. Trust between nodes (“pods”) cannot be guaranteed. Yet much information, like public posts, may well be pulled from one pod, to another. And spam profiles on a spam server might be used to trick users into sharing more than is wise.

As a user, I have a different question. I have been happy to trust joindiaspora.com but new users must use a different public pod, like My Seed or London Diaspora. Rather like signing up to any site, I am making a very significant leap in faith. Yet currently, the pods are operated by volunteers, rather than organizations. For me to build my social network around such a service I would prefer to know more about the server operators.

In general, who you share with is your main privacy safeguard. Once information is shared with users on other servers, or publicly, that information is not really under your control. Thus trusting the server pods is quite important for a user.

There is no guarantee that pods will always run the same policies. Thus the protocols must presume a lack of permission and not trust another server to act on anything other than its own user’s preference (supply user X with information Y).

Federated searches

Search across pods isn’t great at the moment. To improve it, shareable information will need to be searchable and broadcast-able across servers. As I say I’m no expert, but this must pose privacy and especially spam risks, such as spam follow requests.

The pods will have a lot of work to do

A pod with a lot of users will get complaints and legal requests.

Sample legal issues will include copyright, libel and defamation takedown requests, and perhaps worst, requests for user information from police and courts.

The will have to deal with spam, and if there are privacy breaches, users may well want redress. These users may not even be on the same server, if their comments are wrongly exposed.

Pods will also have to deal with “expulsions” if they don’t wish to deal with a users’ publishing behaviour.

It’s all quite enough to put you off running a pod, but in some ways these are not entirely different issues from running any website or forum.

What about the future?

I want to donate and fundraise for Diaspora. Money and time are crucial for any project, but currently I can’t. This is a major weakness, as Diaspora should be generating money now for its future. Diaspora has momentum, which is useful, but it will also need cash. I’d be very happy if I knew I was contributing to some full time development salaries.

Most importantly, I’d like to know much more about Diaspora’s security. Can I really trust it, and is it answering the right questions? I’d really like to know but I am not in a position to judge.

Thinking about the competition, there is commercial momentum behind Facebook, of course, which is now moving into content distribution. Equally content is moving into social networking. That’s a powerful combination.

Who needs Diaspora?

But Diaspora should, in my view, have an immediate market. Radical left and protest movements are an obvious group who shouldn’t be happy sticking with proprietary networks. In fact, many of the more radical ones have deliberately steered clear of them, arguably to their short term disadvantage. Others, who found themselves expelled from Facebook during the Royal Wedding, should take that as an object lesson in autonomy.

Copyright holders like photographers shouldn’t be happy with the onerous T&Cs of most platforms. And Creative Commons advocates, too, might want to exercise freedom of choice.

Censorship and privacy activists should be trying it out and helping. Anyone concerned about data and power, in fact, should be giving it a go, and seeing if it holds any answers. Find me there at jimkillock@joindiaspora.com

What will really defeat FPTP: local change

The AV referendum is pretty depressing, everyone agrees. Already Lib Dems are apparently debating the consequences of defeat.

In retrospect, Lib Dems may find this was the wrong change to ask for right now, although I like many others wanted them to get something to change in our voting system. It was too early to ask for full blown PR, but the cracks in first past the post are nevertheless growing. What advocates of change should have asked is how to allow a more diverse politics to develop.

Part of the shift to smaller parties is sociological – as people are no longer focused around large, unionized workplaces or belonging to sizeable church congregations. People are more educated and expect more responsive politics. Party loyalties are prone to shift, and there seems no reason to suppose this will reduce.

The other shift, though, was caused by the changes that Labour introduced at the start of its government. New electoral systems in Scotland, Wales and Europe have given a foothold for UKIP, SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the BNP.

What the Lib Dems might have argued for, rather than AV, would be STV at local elections, as they introduced in Scotland. Breaking local monopolies in Tory and Labour heartlands helps smaller parties to get a foothold, as well as ensuring greater democratic competition. Longer term, it is through building parties’ votes at local elections that Westminster constituencies change hands.

FPTP is unsustainable in a multi-party system, which greater local diversity would reinforce. With two major parties, FPTP sort of works, but as soon as three or more parties seriously contest a seat, the results get increasingly unpredicatable and unfair. That’s what AV is meant to address, of course.

Thus, if we assume FPTP is likely to become untenable, the Conservatives should be proponents of AV – as it allows a majoritarian system to persist at the expense of parliamentary diversity, even when voters themselves are diverse. Lib Dems, meanwhile, should be pushing for changes that would allow more voting diversity at at whatever level.

The worry now is that the Lib Dems will implode, and voters move back decisively to Labour and the Conservatives. This might set back both the Lib Dems and electoral reform by some time.

If AV is defeated, then we shouldn’t assume that electoral reform is off the table, as many people will wish us to believe, because of the bigger changes noted above. But we should recognize that big Westminster parties won’t shift to fully representative systems unless they are made to.

Let’s hope the Lib Dems get something worthwhile, whatever happens. Multi-member STV wards in Council elections could be a really fundamental long term shift, but also very difficult to argue against, given the multi-seat wards Councils already have.